ROLEY

  • Monday, July 22nd, 2024

    Anything important?

    I’ve been off celebrating the wife’s birthday and our 30th anniversary, so I didn’t get in until very late on Sunday night. When we’re in the car driving for long distances (OK, you may not consider DC a long distance but I do), I generally listen to podcasts, the very fine New Wave Essentials Playlist on Apple Music, or some kind of synthwave radio station on Apple or YouTube. It wasn’t until very late that I heard the news that Joe Biden decided to step away from re-election.

    I mean, hate on the synthwave all you want, but I haven’t heard wall to wall coverage saying the same thing for 48 hours. I’ve heard Moog synthesizers saying the same thing for 24. One of those is decidedly better.

    A note about the 2023 Buick Envision, which we rented instead of me driving Jonathan Livingston SUV. Great car, though it should be said I have a VERY soft space for GM, Pontiac and Buick especially. That said, Not enough space in the back for travel, especially if there’s more than two. This is not a family vehicle. We did the grocery shopping before we left, and we were JUST able to get the weekly haul back there. The only other thing I did not like about the car was the center armrest compartment. It was split in half longways, like a split top hot-dog bun, and opened that way, so the door was still ‘in the way’. Loved everything else about this SUV. One improvement I’d make is to make the compartment underneath the climate control—where the USB and Power ports are—I’d make the bottom plate a MagSafe charger. That way, I could use CarPlay and keep the phone out of sight and mind. I should note that this was my first experience using CarPlay, and my next car must have it.

    On a related note, as I returned the Envision, there was a late model blue Dodge Challenger outside. Had I known I could have rented one of those, I’d…well, I’d probably be in a Fairfax County Jail but I would have had a shit load of fun before I got arrested.

    Coming Attractions

    One other thing that’s happening this week is my hatching day, and while I rarely care too much about it or even draw attention to it, I’ve been giving some thought about the next year of my life and what I want to accomplish. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I’d like to be a bit more regular with posting here, so I will try. The next year will be based on the word “Return”. Return to writing, return to photography/videography, return to podcasting, return to content creation.

    The other thing that I have returned to is a focus on my own mental well being. I engage in way too much drama even when I’m trying to avoid it. So, we’re going to work on cutting that out. The past few months have seen a change in my…I don’t know. The core of me is different, and way more cutthroat when it comes to dealing with things and people. The good thing is that I can let a lot more just roll by me if it’s not ‘important’. It’s a matter of picking what things I want to spend my energy on. It’s also a realization that some of the things I still spend energy on is not important or not healthy and needs to stop. So, that’s another project.

    Finally, the next year is going to be spent on my physical living spaces. The house, my studio, and this carcass. I haven’t done anything to improve any of the above in four years, and I’m fed up with all of it. That’s a valid use of my time and energy, and will receive a huge focus over the next year. We’ll see how well I deal with that.

  • Wednesday, July 17 2024

    Housekeeping

    A follow-up from yesterday: I’ve added a new page to the blog called LINKS, which will be updated daily(ish) with things I find interesting. You’ll note a hashtag next to the heading, which is an Anchor Tag that I’ll use to link you to the appropriate day when I share it via social. I’ve seen other folks use hashtags for the list items themselves, but I’ve found that those send you to a separate single post as well. I don’t think WP has that functionality, so I’ll just use this for the time being.

    This gets me closer to the vision I had for this blog for a long time, where I’m not using posts, but a list divided daily on a single page. I like this, and I may switch to it overall for daily use. I’ll still keep the blog, but that would be for when I need to bloviate a bit more (ok, more than usual.)

    If The Engagement Lasts More Than Four Hours

    The funny part about writing a post about the sad state of clickbait (for lack of a better term), is that when you title the post “Social Internet has ED“, I’m the schmuck that is so amused by that title I’m going to click on it. The upshot of the post is that the current state of the internet is all about the algorithm and manipulating it to your advantage. When you understand that engagement doesn’t care if you’re positive or negative, just that you engage, then you begin to understand why some people craft the posts they do. The ‘Own the libs’ crowd, for example. Boebert, Greene, Gaetz, and that ilk understand this (or their social media team), and yet we still argue with them online. It’s at the point that I don’t even screenshot them and respond anymore. I’m really beginning to wonder if rediscovering and optimizing the blog rather than contributing to social media is the answer. Social media used to drive traffic to blogs and websites, I wonder if that’s still the case. I know it still drives me nuts, that’s for sure.

  • Tuesday, July 16th 2024

    In all of history, it turns out that there is nothing like a crisis to take control of the narrative. It’s the best way to help people point fingers at someone for something they’re also guilty of. The more dire the circumstances the better. Gabby Giffords would like to have a word with us about this.

    CORRECTION

    Starting, I have a correction to make. My friend the photographer who was recently laid off has a website, but it’s different from the one I *thought* he had. I linked to his FB Page yesterday, even though I really can’t stand Facebook. Here’s his page on Pixels. Please take a look at his work and buy something. He’s a great guy and a great photographer. Thanks.

    NEW IDEAS

    Thinking of new content ideas for the blog/podcast. I’ve long had the idea to do a rewatch of Doctor Who, starting with An Unearthly Child in 1963. There certainly wouldn’t be a lack of content. Other shows I have had the itch to do is Bosch, and The Newsroom. I did give some thought to doing a review of WWE Raw and Smackdown, but that would be an impossible turnaround for me. I started watching Bond Movies starting with Dr. No, but the further I got into it, the more creeped out I got by how Connery’s Bond would not be tolerated today at all. Different time, I suppose.

    LINKS 2 3 4….

    What about a separate page here on the Site dedicated to daily links? See here for an example.

    LAYING OFF THE SHINY

    I may have reached the point where the new shiny stuff doesn’t excite me. I upgraded my phone, and as it turns out my new phone is going to be able to do the new AI stuff that Apple is going to release in the fall, but all I wanted was the damn camera. AI doesn’t grab me. Maybe it should, but I also realize that AI is coming for my job one of these days, so I can’t find the room to get that excited about it.

    Additionally, I find myself sick of consumerism, late-stage capitalism I’m supposed to think is synonymous with freedom. I don’t think the new shiny is synonymous with freedom. It’s synonymous with bankruptcy. At least, that’s what Living Color told me.

    JUST ANOTHER WORD FOR…

    ‘Freedom’ has become a word that means whatever the person or group using it wants it to mean. I invite you to go back to the opening scene of the first episode of The Newsroom for a better explanation of the use of that word. I might be a bit idealist, but I don’t think it was always so. You could say the same with ‘American’. I do not have to be a white cis Republican Evangelical to be an American. I don’t have to be a woke bisexual atheist to be one either. There is no real definition other than through the lottery of life I was blessed to be born here. The rest I get to decide because I am allowed to, and folks that would like to set our watches to 1952 don’t get to choose that for me.

  • Monday, June 15th 2024

    Recently I thought I’d try writing things—jokes, mainly-as they came to me. I liked it, but it just doesn’t fit with my mindset of what I (think I) want this site to be. I am forever a work in progress. There was a time where I was convinced that being forever a work in progress was a bad thing. I think there were people around me that were frustrated that I couldn’t be set in one thing, but that’s just not me. I’m going to be 54 next week, and my GAF was all but destroyed years ago.

    It’s not me, it’s you.

    Apparently my former employer is still ‘restructuring’. I saw that some remarkable human beings I had the pleasure of working with were told that his services are no longer required. I’m sure it’s nothing more than cutting the higher paid people in order to have someone else do the same job (or twice the work!) for less money. Still, the thing that’s really bothering me about this round is that it involved call center associates. They said over and over when I dodged the first two rounds of layoffs was that they weren’t going to touch the call center floor. I guess that’s been forgotten. It was only a matter of time. The company makes cameras and printers, neither of which are widely used by consumers anymore, and they were way behind the curve on things the rest of the camera world had embraced years earlier.

    I know it’s not supposed to be personal, but when you invest a great amount of yourself and your time it’s hard to not take it personally. In my case, I’ve always felt it WAS personal. It really destroyed me for a long time to the point that I couldn’t do anything creative at all. I hope my friend can bounce back better than I did. I also hope he can make an honest go with his photography business. I’d like to direct you to his photography website, but it appears to be down. So I’ll direct you to his Facebook Page. Please have a look and if he brings back his shop site, please consider buying something from him, and by all means spread the word.

    We’d like you to decide, even though you’ve already decided.

    I honestly don’t know how this isn’t the simplest of decisions. I don’t care who the Democratic nominee is, I’m voting for that person because I am not interested in opening the Seventh Seal of the Apocalypse. Is Biden older than dirt? Of course he is. Do I care? Maybe, but that’s what the 25th Amendment is for. I’m waiting for the first Republican to say a damn thing about the 25th Amendment, but if I was a betting man, I’d bet they will stay quiet about handing the Presidency to Kamala. Funny thing, that. I bet they do return to the birtherism real quick, tho.

    That said, Biden hasn’t helped his cause. The stuttering is baked in, as far as I’m concerned. What isn’t baked in is the switching up of names, the rambling and gibberish with no real direction, and the long—LONG—pauses. Yes, Trump does it too. Breaking News: They’re both old as fuck. However, that’s the ballot. Unless there’s a real, successful draft at the DNC in Chicago (the irony!), Biden is the nominee. No draft movement has ever been successful.

    He’s Just This Guy, You Know?

    Trump is the immediate existential danger, but if I’m being honest it’s not Trump himself I’m worried about. What worries me is the Zaphod effect.

    In the classic-oh-my-god-this-is-required-reading novel The Hitchikers’ Guide to the Galaxy, the President of the Galaxy is Zaphod Beeblebrox. He brings nothing to the table. He’s a party animal and an idiot. But his antics distract the people so they’re not paying attention to the folks really doing the work. That’s Trump.

    Trump is going to Trump. We know this. They know this as well, and they’re counting on it.

    Yeah, but when is the Two Minutes of Hate?

    The RNC convention started today, and maybe I’m just old. I remember conventions being run differently. Not covered differently (although I can make that argument as well), but it seems more like a marriage of informercial and cult worship than it used to be. I’m watching C-SPAN for neutral coverage (because I am that nerd), and some minor amusements.

    • *First, I see Marsha Blackburn, the protokaren from Tennessee, found the time to brush that rats nest she calls a hairdo.
    • Second, it’s funny to hear the band playing Where The Streets Have No Name, but dare not speak a word of it.
    • They’re doing the nomination election at 3pm on the first day. Why the first day, and why not in Primetime? Also, it has been my experience that at some point, someone makes a motion to wrap up the nomination by acclamation. Not so in this case. Ego much?
    • Junior’s a twat. Also, Junior’s a twat.
    • Youngkin is slightly less of a twat than Junior, but the twatfulness is still strong.
    • They are really calling The Orange Mush ‘the bravest man in America.’
    • All the folks who read their speeches from a phone or a sheet of paper and STILL mangled their way through their state delegate votes totals need to have a fucking seat when it comes to Biden’s stutter or prompter use.
    • You can always count on old white dudes (including me) to have the worst rhythm in the known universe. Awkward knows no party.
    • In what must be the first documented Karen moment of the convention, Senior Karen was upset that Middle-aged Chad wanted her to stop waving her Trump placard long enough for him to get a picture of…something. Probably the house band, Slightly Spicy Mayo (I don’t know, why not?), to document their playing ‘I Want You To Want Me’ for 15 minutes.

    It’s only 4pm. This should be fun…

  • KJP’s Inner Monologue

    (What in the actual, physical and spiritual fuck is happening right now? How many times am I gonna have to answer the same fucking question about this? Jesus, Mary and Frankenberry. I mean, normally it’s just Doocy that acts like a decerebate, now I have a whole fucking room of them.

    Meanwhile, I got a boss that’s hiding under his desk and shouting the Gondor calls for aid. I bet that was the movie on the flight home? While we’re on the subject…jet lag? Really? D-Day and the G7? That was a month ago. How long does it take to get back to normal? It’s six hours, not six fucking weeks!

    I swear, I can just install a See and Say in every one of these motherfuckers that just says “Is he dropping out? Does he have dementia? Why does everything here smell like formaldehyde and regret?” Get me out of here.

    I never want to see a pint of ice cream for as long as I live.)

  • 19 Years Ago Today, We Didn’t Have To Wish.

    I turned off all the phones, I shut down all the computers, and told the world I’d plot the most violent of endings if I was interrupted during the duration of this event.

    It will never happen again, but it happened this one time, and it was…

    It was.

  • Jobs For The Recently Disbarred Crazy Uncle In Your Life

    1. Quality Control for the YKK Zipper Company

    2. Masking Fragrance Tester

    3. Cloud Tamer

    4. Landscape Whisperer

    5. Box Color Hair Model

    6. “Boxcar Rudy”

    7. Sentence Diagrammer

    8. “OhHELLNOFans”

    9. The comedy stylings of Rudy and Sidney.

    10. Example.

  • ARTICLE: Maybe We Should Start Learning Swedish

    Today’s Supreme Court decision on immunity doesn’t fill me with confidence. To look at social media today, there’s a lot of spewing on both sides about which side ‘won’.

    No one ‘won’, but I think *we* lost.

    This argument isn’t about Trump. This is about the Presidency. It doesn’t matter who that person is, but everyone you see or read is preoccupied with the short term. They’re also reading for the lowest of hanging fruit. Democrats are saying “Well, that means that Biden can (insert wet dream here)!” Over on the MAGA side they’re dragging out the ‘mug of liberal tears jokes’ again. Neither side is interested in looking beyond November of 2024 out of political convenience.

    As an example, take a look at what happened when Harry Reid nuked the 60 vote cloture rule for all judicial nominations except for the Supreme Court in 2013. In the short term it gave the Senate Democrats the ability to confirm their nominations to the bench with a simple majority. Great news for the Democrat majority, until they lose that majority.

    In 2017, Mitch McConnell—having regained the position of Majority Leader— stepped through the door that Harry Reid opened and nuked the 60 vote threshold for Supreme Court Justices. As a result, Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett were confirmed relatively easily without a vote from the Democratic side. We all know the rest of that story.

    The point is that what was politically expedient for one party in the Senate in the short term worked against them in the long term. Presidential immunity will be no different. There’s nothing to stop a President from taking any action they like as long as it can be justified as an official action. That means that they will find a way to argue that everything they do is an official action, and litigating that will take longer than these Trump cases. The President—any President—is now unburdened by the threat of prosecution, and that’s not likely to change any time soon.

    What will change is the group that thinks that it’s not a problem.

  • VIDEO: Michael J Fox and Coldplay Destroyed Me.

    Listen, this song hits me right in the feels anyway. WHY YOU DO THIS CHRIS MARTIN?

    Man.

  • Journal, April 24th, 2024

    • There are days when I wish I had more than one choice for internet in my neighborhood. Cox is the de facto monopoly here, and I have to play their game since I work from home. Lately, my connection keeps dropping several times a day. While it is a nuisance for me, it is a real problem for She Who Must Be Obeyed. She takes calls in her position, and dropping calls on the regular is Not Optimal™. Calling Cox Tech Support is a totally different level of fuckery. I have to admit that because I have worked for over 10 years at call centers that are all US based, I have to reign in my inner Chad when it comes to offshore support. Because I’ve taken calls, I try to treat people with the respect I would appreciate if I were on the phones, but when it becomes obvious that they are less interested in helping me fix my problem, and more interested in upselling me, I check out. I ended up calling my local Cox Retail store and turns out my router was the problem. OK, I drive down there and get a new router, and while I’m there, the rep says he can cut my bill by 50 bucks. He took care of that, I got the new router hooked up and updated all the devices with the new network, and we haven’t dropped since 11am this morning. It occurs to me that this happens every three years or so, and it doesn’t matter if I use their router or I use another one. Looks like it’s fixed for now.
    • There’s a new app called Bless Every Home, and according to this article from The New Republic, it maps neighborhoods and collects data on who needs a visit from your local Happy Young Christians ™. Remember, it’s the Chinese we’re supposed to be worried about with the data thing.
    • Lara the Pop Idol would like you to know that they don’t just have poll watchers, but they have folks that can physically handle the ballots. She also would like you to know that they have lawsuits in 81 states right now. Lara the Pop Idol is full of shit.
    • Can’t remember who said it, but I read someone today they said if they announced an iPad Mini Pro, it would take them less than 45 seconds to order it. That reminds me, I would LOVE an iPad Mini. Just to use as a consumption device, like books, the crossword, social scrolling, what few games I play (poker, and poker.) A new Mini is like 600 right now. I saw Mini 5’s 64 GB for 250 somewhere, and lost it. Later. Much later. I’m in create mode now, and not just the stories. I’m working on the house little by little, and that’s where the money is going right now. How much money? All of it. ALL OF IT.

    That’s it for today. Your regular (daily? Maybe not) Oreo.